My last blog was on quality time which I find ironic because Albanians are all about it. 

We have people come knocking on our door every night to simply just hangout or dance. They want to show us places, learn our language, and simply just be with us.
Night two in Albania some teenage boys asked us to play soccer and I could not say no to some good exercise, quality time and a sport I used to be fairly good at.

Y’all, Albanians take soccer serious.

They literally jumped over the fences to get to the field where we played.
A few boys were late to the 5:00 start time so essentially, they were not allowed to play.

Then I played against them and realized that the skill level I have is nothing compared to these 14 year old and younger boys.

I think my teammate said it best
“Soccer and laughter are universal.”

Ministry can be difficult with the language barrier although the love we were able to show Thursday night far out weighed our culture differences. We fell down a lot, I was nutmegged more times than I’d like to admit and a fight broke out but through this we were able to show Jesus’s love.

I mentioned earlier that if you are late you cannot play. One boy, you could call him the leader of the pack, was not the friendliest to one of his peers because he was late. They began physically fighting because the leader denied letting him play. We continuously kept inviting the little boy to be on our team and play any way. We explained to the pack of boys that it is not serious. He was only 5 minutes late and we wanted everyone to play. They said no it is serious. We were persistent in our invitation to the little boy.
After 10 minutes of this they gave in. Not only did they let him play, they let him be on their team. That is Jesus’s love. Forever inviting in the least of these. The Sheep and the Goats.